“Don’t bother. I’ll meet you soon,” she told him.
“Indeed,” Lavrov said. “I do look forward to it, Miss Stryker.”
Kyra turned off the transmitter and the screen faded. Assume Lavrov isn’t lying. He has Jon, but Jon’s alive, she told herself again. Where are they holding him? How do I find him? Even if I can find him, how do I get in and get him out? How—
Why do you always run straight in? Jon’s voice repeated in her head. Find a better way for once.
Kyra lay on her back in the grass, staring up at the stars. She did not move until the answer came.
When it did, she pulled out her smartphone, launched the secure recording app, and began to talk. “This is GRANITE. I have reason to believe that all assets in this AOR have been compromised…”
Sokolov pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to the incinerator room. He pulled it wide open and held it as the guards led the accused in. The man shuffled along as best he could with the shackles keeping him from taking a full stride. The interrogator was patient and let the prisoner move at his own pace. There was no hurry now.
Sokolov dismissed the guards. “Stand outside until I call you, please,” he said. They nodded, took up their places in the hall, and closed the door. He pulled out a chair for the prisoner. “Please, sit,” he said to the man in chains. “I’m sure that it was a difficult walk.”
The prisoner looked at him, suspicious, but reclined in the chair.
Sokolov reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the folded papers he’d carried there. “You are Semyon Petrovich Zhitomirsky,” he said.
“I am,” the prisoner replied.
“And you were a colonel?”
“I am,” Zhitomirsky said.
“You were,” Sokolov said. “Your commission in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye has been revoked, I’m afraid. That is the first and least punishment given to traitors to the Rodina.”
“I have been convicted of nothing. I have confessed to nothing,” Zhitomirsky countered.
“It does not matter,” the interrogator told his prisoner. “You have been identified as a spy for the United States of America. The source who revealed you is unimpeachable, or so I’m told, and the evidence found in your dacha leaves you guilty beyond question.”
“Lies. I am innocent.”
“You did not even try to run.”
“As I told you, I am innocent.”
“And you have proof of your innocence?” Sokolov asked.
“I cannot prove a negative. Neither can I prove that our fellow officers planted their evidence in my home—”
“Please, sir, you insult me,” Sokolov scolded him. “The evidence was neither planted nor fabricated and we both know it. You are not here to defend yourself. Your guilt has been confirmed to the satisfaction of the highest authorities and there will be neither a trial nor appeal. You are here because I am offering you a chance to heal your conscience, if you still have one. If you are a religious man, you may think of me as a priest to whom you can confess your sins. If you are not, you may share with me any words you might care to have recorded. Beyond that, there truly is nothing to say.”
Even in the harsh fluorescent light, Sokolov could see Zhitomirsky’s face turn white, almost the color of his dress shirt. “No!” the shackled Russian protested. “This is not the Soviet Union! Not anymore! The old ways… we don’t—”
Sokolov sighed as the prisoner ranted, then waved his hand in the air, signaling for silence. “Sir, protesting to me is pointless. Even if I had the authority to release you or alter your sentence, I would not because then our superiors would execute me in your place. But you are here because you chose to be here—”
“I did not!” Zhitomirsky objected.
“Yes, you did,” Sokolov told him. “I am always amazed at the shortsightedness of traitors. Did you honestly believe that you would never be found? And of course you knew what would follow if and when you were found. You were an officer of the GRU for twenty years. You took the counterintelligence training. You knew how past traitors were treated. And you still chose this course.”
Zhitomirsky stared at him, the inevitable finally settling in his mind. His head fell, his chin almost to his chest, and great racking sobs exploded out of him. The interrogator had seen it many times. He didn’t judge the man or think him a coward, but neither did he feel pity for him. The prisoner was simply going through the cycle that every condemned man suffered in his closing moments.
“Semyon Petrovich, if you have nothing to say that you want me to carry back out of this room, then I hope you will do me the kind favor of answering a single question,” Sokolov said.
Zhitomirsky raised his head, tears on his cheeks. “What is it?”
“Why did you do it? Surely you had a reason.”
The silence lasted for almost ten seconds before the heaving sobs returned, and it took the prisoner two minutes to compose himself enough to speak again. “I hated my superiors,” he said, finally. “They told me that I would never be promoted to general.”
“And wisely so, it seems,” Sokolov said. “Petty revenge. You had no better reason than petty revenge. To salve your ego, you sold your country. Utter selfishness at its worst. I could have respected you had you shared some noble reason for your actions. If a man is going to betray his country, he should do so for his principles.” He folded the papers, returned them to his pocket, and stood.
“I have done you the favor you asked,” Zhitomirsky said. “Will you do one for me?”
“I will consider it.”
“Let me stand up when you shoot me,” the prisoner asked.
“I regret that I can’t grant that favor,” Sokolov said. It was the truth.
“You would deny me that? Such a small request?”
“I must, because you are not going to be shot.”
Zhitomirsky blinked, and hope passed across his face. “I… I am to go to prison?”
“No,” Sokolov said. “I am under orders that you are not to leave this room. But your hated superiors have such contempt for you that they do not wish to waste a bullet on you.” He closed the file, stood, and opened the door.
Two men walked in, both dressed in coveralls. The lead man, a muscular, balding man, reached into a pocket, pulled a Taser, and moved toward the prisoner. His partner, a skinnier, younger man with a military haircut, kept walking toward the incinerator.
Confusion took hold of Zhitomirsky and he stared at the men until he figured out the simple riddle, and his face went pale again. “No!” he shouted, drawing back. The larger man pressed the Taser against Zhitomirsky’s neck, silencing his yell as every muscle in Zhitomirsky’s body seized up. The prisoner convulsed, then fell off the chair onto the floor.
The muscular guard replaced the Taser in his pocket and pulled out two pairs of handcuffs as his comrade opened the incinerator door, which squealed on ungreased iron hinges.
“The stretcher is in the corner behind the furnace,” Sokolov told them as they pulled the table and chair toward the corner to free up space for maneuvering. “Advise me when it is done.” He took up the file and left the room. He’d seen many a man die during his years of service, but one of Zhitomirsky’s superiors must truly have hated the man to have ordered this punishment. I truly wish you had escaped, Sokolov thought. No man deserves this, no matter what he has done or why.